


Stills

by wateryblooms



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Mention of torture, Mentioned Bullism, Mentioned Paranoia, Nightmares, PTSD, Pre-reunion, The Empty Hearse Missing Scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 18:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4110892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wateryblooms/pseuds/wateryblooms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mirror reflects a face; whose face, you don't know yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stills

The mirror reflects a face; whose face, you don't know yet.

You’ve passed years in front of the mirror, many years. Not without a hint of subjectivity, even if you hate to think so, looking in a reflected surface has always been more important than you’d like to admit. And not because of the vanity that everyone attributes to you – you are vain, but not about what concerns your body (why would your physical appearance matter when you have an infinitely more interesting mind?) - But because the presentation is important - vital - for your job. It’s essential means of communication and great advantage for those like you who are delighted to indulge in the art of disguise in plain sight. So little needed, just a comma, to change the meaning of the message to be transmitted. So little needed to be invisible.

But now it’s been a long time since the last time you’ve seen this face. The hair cut, your beard shaved and new clothes - beautiful illusions to make you look the man you were. Already different from the one that you wore two days ago - yes, you wear and take off identities as robes, with a simple shrug - but no tricks will make you believe to be back at being who you have always been.

There are so many signs that don’t belong to that ancient face. Hollow cheeks, dark bags under your eyes are things you've seen before. A flash of light and you already see yourself reflected in that mirror, but almost ten years younger. Chapped lips, red eyes and constellations of holes on your arm. Scars that now are nothing but the clearest signs, almost invisible. You looked in the mirror as you recovered from your second overdose, you saw your fingers tremble, thin skin crumpled like tissue paper. It wasn’t the first time (you had already had yourself detoxified once, to prove to your brother you could). But most of all, you’ve seen the failure hidden behind your eyes; blackmail whispered by the sweetest voice in the cruelest of ways: either the cases or the cocaine. And it was the first time that you have admitted, at least to yourself, you needed help.

But if those signs are like photographs taken from a dusty old album of memories, new experiences have made their appearance on your gaunt face. Wrinkles, new scars. You turn back, walk your fingers on your shoulder, gingerly down on the shoulder blade, along the edge of one of the scars.

The milder wounds are cicatrizing by themselves, some have needed medical intervention (but they might had been infected before). Slightly further down, along your side, a purple bruise stains your skin like ink on white canvas. But the most obvious signs aren’t the only ones to crowd every centimeter of your skin. Each scrape, each puncture, every little cut joins the numerous cracks that break the fabric. Physically vulnerable. An easy target.

Long ago, you couldn’t have guessed what you would become. When your hair cascaded down in long and disheveled clumps above your eyes, when you had to get up on tiptoes to see your face in the mirror, your smile was clear and bright, and the only ornaments were cuts and bruises that you used to get in your immense backyard. Your nose was less prominent, your eyebrows sparser and your face still not so lean, but softened by the roundness that childhood had taken away, leaving sharp edges and corners with which defend yourself.

Even a few years later you wouldn’t have guessed how you'd change. Your adolescence had been forgiving from that point of view, compared to your classmates’ ones: your features had redefined soon, saving you from painful stages of mixture where you are neither an adult nor a child. The injuries which were more frequent during that period were war wounds: burns that you purchased during some chemistry experiments, more or less expected, mediocre fractures obtained during wild workouts of fencing and baritsu, beatings and bruises scattered along your body, sometimes also a black eye, caused by your classmates who loved answering to the quirks of your mind with fists.

That face is not the face of Sherlock Holmes. Even _you_ are not Sherlock Holmes anymore.

Sherlock Holmes was the one who lived through the confused papers and the smoky atmosphere of 221b Baker Street, the musty smell of nights spent on the dark offices of Scotland Yard on infinite files, the one who jousted his time between the chemical equipment at St. Bart’s and heartbreaking marathons on the violin when he needed to think, dancing between the red wires of his cases, a job he loved, a city he lived, alongside the only man he appreciated. This freelance agent with a nicotine addiction, torture scars on his back, eyes moving frantically from the door to the window at regular intervals to check for possible ways out, is not Sherlock Holmes. He's a ghost living nightmares and paranoia, moments of lucidity in a fog of sufferance. He’s a ghost, an imprint of a man who was buried two years ago and no, he has never came back.

Of course, to be honest, you would never have imagined yourself this way because you never thought of reaching the ripe old age of thirty-nine.

You had just assumed that you'd be dead before. And you did go near, over and over again, without ever quite succeeding. Something elusive, death is, as every moment that passes on this alien and unknown face, to which you should get used to soon.

And now, suddenly, a new idea comes through, completely unexpected, never contemplated. It's a fascinating thought, almost to caress; that face not only has reached today, but it may also to survive tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And again the day after, who knows? This face will not be stone carved by fire and wind and the passing of centuries, immortalized in the pages where you were made indestructible by your blogger. It will be a face which will proceed in its slow degradation, which may be reborn or fade altogether. The hair may become sparse, gray, your curls may lose consistency. The wrinkles accentuated now by sleep deprivation, malnutrition and dehydration may wedge deeper into your skin, digging deep with age, becoming indelible. Your eyes may be weak and blind, faded but still present; your hands may return to shake, but not because of the withdrawal from the usual stimulants. Your muscles will lose their tone, your skin will scale and flake off; your breath, your voice, your reflections will be taken away. Everything that makes you yourself will be taken away.

But there is one thing that will remain, or you’ll make it last. You cannot allow the fog to envelop it, to compromise it. You’ll rather stop that.

Your mind will slow down, take some breaths, but won't cease its steady and shocking pace. Not until the last day. You’ll sustain it, you’ll train it, you’ll do that in order it’ll remain firm and present. Your anchor to the world, your shield against it; the barrier, the only one that marks the boundaries between yourself and everything else.

Without his biggest asset, without his greatest curse, his closest companion, Sherlock Holmes is nothing. But at the same time, as long as it will be among your faculty, as long as it will be in your possession, under your control, used in the best way, you can be nothing but Sherlock Holmes.

And if the image in the mirror will never cease to change its shape, until the last day, that does not mean that you will leave behind parts of you to acquire new ones, not even your identity.

Even though the mirror reflects a new stranger every day, nothing will change that this stranger is you, misunderstood outside, never gone inside.

You run two pale fingers on the cold mirror, light as butterfly wings. You wonder how a smile appears on your lips – an old smile, which knows everything and nothing, familiar yet completely revolutionized.

You recognize yourself.

For once, Sherlock Holmes wants to live.

For once, he wants to be himself.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second translation of my works from my native language. I'm still a bit awkward in English, so if you see any mistakes, please tell me. It's very important.  
> Hope you'll like it!
> 
> Original Version: http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3140736&i=1


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